ANN ARBOR, Mich. (WXYZ) — After 15 months, the national title drought for Michigan is over as the men’s gymnastics squad brought home the title on Saturday night. But unlike the football team last January, this one came down to the very end and it was as close as you could possibly get.
“I just remember standing there with Rithik just thinking please, please, please, please let this be it,” sophomore Charlie Larson said.
“Staring at that score, I was just praying,” senior Rithik Puri added.
Less than two-tenths of a point. That’s what separated Michigan's first national championship since 2014 from a third-straight national runner up to Stanford.
“It’s a point in basketball, but it’s a point that’s scored with a half-court buzzer beater. It’s literally as close as you can get,” Puri said.
Which certainly gives "a game of inches" a whole new meaning.
“If your feet move small step, that’s 1/10. If it moves bigger like shoulder wide that’s 3/10,” head coach Yuan Xiao said.
“All 24 routines, if we did literally anything different, we wouldn’t have one,” junior captain Zach Granados said.
For the past decade, Michigan won every trophy imaginable except for the one that says national champions — until now.
“We earned that, we deserved that… for me, that’s a great place to end the national championship,” Xiao said.
“To be able to be here in Ann Arbor with our friends and family to be able to look in the crowd and see three full sections of Michigan fans, it was exactly what we asked for and I don’t think we could have written it any better,” Granados said.
This is the seventh national championship in program history
